Net Shepherd Reviews First Quarter Progress And Announces Q1 Results
Calgary, Alberta - Wednesday, May 24, 2000, 4:14 PM EDT
Net Shepherd Inc. (CDNX: WEB) today published its results for the first quarter.
"Net Shepherd made considerable progress during the first quarter of 2000", said Don Sandford, President & CEO of Net Shepherd, in a statement published today.The remainder of the statement reads as follows:
At our Special Meeting in March to vote on the Enhanced Business Transactions with ClickChoice.com and the Vanenburg Group, in excess of 99% of the eligible shareholders who voted supported the deal.
* These Transactions will propel Net Shepherd's growth exponentially and help provide an expanded engine to better execute our North American and worldwide business plan.
* The results, which we are already experiencing, include expedited technology development by using multiple teams in several countries, include preferentially priced Indian software development resources.
* The Transactions also better our position to close revenue-generating contracts and assist the go-to-market strategies for our US-based subsidiary Application Companies (AppCos).
Net Shepherd continues to build value for shareholders by investing in the next generation of its technology platform and its internet-linked community. This will bring benefits to shareholders through an increasing valuation for Net Shepherd and the subsidiary companies in the Group, all of which leverage this technology.
The first of these AppCos, Answers.com, has tripled in staff in recent months. New technical staff are negotiating the technology partnerships that will enable Answers to offer a range of technology solutions, including answering customers' questions on corporate websites. New sales staff are not only selling to small and medium-sized enterprises, but are also competing at the Fortune 500 end of the market. Net Shepherd expects to be able to make revenue and technology partnership announcements in the coming weeks. Our business intelligence AppCo, ktopia, is also making good progress since its recent formation, as was reported in our recent announcement. Several revenue-generating demonstration projects are underway and we except to see significant revenue growth from this company later this year.
ClickChoice.com became an AppCo with the closure of the Enhanced Business Transactions. The recent announcement of their partnership with ASG Technologies has enabled ClickChoice to proceed with the joint development and marketing of a sophisticated Internet content filtering and management solution for ISP's, corporations, schools and libraries.
The closure of the Enhanced Business Transactions enables the Net Shepherd Group to re-shape its organisation in line with its business objectives and the resources that are now available to it. The executive teams in Calgary and Atlanta have been integrated. Calgary will concentrate on Corporate Strategy, Corporate Finance, Strategic Technology and Innovation and will house Net Shepherd's Intellectual Property. Atlanta will manage Software Development and Operations, with strategic outsourced development partnerships in California and India.
These new arrangements will reduce Corporate Offices' annual fixed costs by approximately C$3.0 million, after incurring a one-off re-structuring charge of C$800,000 in this first quarter.
We are very pleased that Atlanta-based Michael Payne has joined Net Shepherd from ClickChoice as our new Chief Operating Officer. His immediate priority is to improve Net Shepherd's execution and delivery performance, in keeping with the ever-increasing market demand we are experiencing for our services. Mr Payne has a strong track record in technology management, software development and operations.
The scaling up of the AppCos, the re-structuring charges, the acquisition of ClickChoice and the amortization of goodwill/intangibles associated with this acquisition results in an increase in costs in this first quarter compared with the same period for last year. This has resulted in a loss of C$4.9 million.
However, Net Shepherd's objectives of closing revenue-generating contracts are being vigorously pursued, together with our go-to-market strategies. This is an exciting time for Net Shepherd. I believe that we will see increases in revenue later in the year, as the commercial operations of the Net Shepherd Group come to fruition.
"We will be holding one of our quarterly Net Shepherd Investor Forum teleconferences at 2.30 pm Calgary time on Monday the 29th of May", concluded Sandford. "Participants should call in on 800-273-9672. I hope that people will be able to join us to discuss our progress and prospects for the future."
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Denise.
PS. Notice the comment... "Net Shepherd expects to be able to make revenue and technology partnership announcements in the coming weeks." |
